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What we now know as “pasta” originated in Italy. While many different cultures ate some sort of noodle-like food, composed mostly of grain, the key characteristics of pasta are durum wheat semolina, with a high gluten content, made with a technique that allows the resultant mixture to be highly malleable. Thus, the many different shapes (i.e., ziti, spaghetti, ravioli) and uses in various recipes.

South of Europe, in Arab North Africa, a similar food has been eaten for centuries: cous-cous.

The works of the 200 AD Greek physician Galen mention itrion, homogeneous compounds and recipes made up of flour and water. The Jerusalem Talmud records that itrium, a kind of boiled dough, was among the most common recipes in Palestine from the 3rd to 5th centuries AD. A dictionary compiled by the 9th century Syrian physician and lexicographer Isho bar Ali defines itriyya, the Arabic cognate, as string-like shapes made of semolina and dried before cooking (The Pasta Channel plans to post some authentic pasta recipes loosely based on itriyya ). One form of itriyya with a long history is laganum (plural lagana), which in Latin refers to a thin sheet of dough, and gives rise to a variety of early Italian “lasagna” recipes. (The Pasta Channel also plans to post some authentic recipes for Lasagna based on itriyya)

In 100 BC writings of Horace, various recipes for lagana consisted of fine sheets of a flour mixture that were fried and were essentially an everyday food. Writing in the 2nd century Athenaeus of Naucratis provides recipes for lagana which he attributes to the 1st century Chrysippus of Tyana. An early 5th century cookbook describes several recipes for a dish called lagana that consisted of layers of dough with meat stuffing, a possible ancestor of modern-day Lasagna recipes. But the method of cooking these sheets of dough does not correspond to our modern definition of Pasta recipes.

The first concrete information concerning Pasta in Italy dates from the thirteenth or fourteenth century. The question of Pasta’s origin continues to evoke speculation.